Tony Bloom Betting
Bloom's company was soon making millions, especially in the Asian markets where Bloom found a huge edge with Starlizard's attention to detail. An upmarket betting syndicate is the best way of. Tony Bloom: The Lizard Like many of the biggest gamblers in the world, Tony Bloom owes much of his success to a combination of computer and mathematical based betting, as well as business savvy. Bloom is the owner of Premier League club Brighton & Hove Albion. After graduating from Manchester University with a maths degree, the world was Bloom’s oyster. But betting was where the heart lay and poker was the perfect game for clued-up Bloom. He’d soon win his first fortune on the tables and was already thinking of the best way to invest. Englander Tony Bloom, like Zerj, cut his teeth playing cards, earning roughly $3.3 million in live tournaments to date. But word is this guy took it to the next level (or three) when he started betting on sports and selling his picks.
| Tony Bloom | |
|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | The Lizard |
| Born | Anthony Grant Bloom 20 March 1970 (age 50) Brighton, Sussex, England |
| World Series of Poker | |
| Bracelet(s) | None |
| Money finish(es) | 11 |
| Highest ITM Main Event finish | 512th, 2006 |
| World Poker Tour | |
| Title(s) | None |
| Final table(s) | 1 |
| Money finish(es) | 2 |
| European Poker Tour | |
| Title(s) | None |
| Final table(s) | None |
| Money finish(es) | 1 |
Anthony Grant Bloom (born 20 March 1970 in Brighton, Sussex) is a British professional sports bettor, poker player, entrepreneur and owner/chairman of Premier Leaguefootball club Brighton & Hove Albion and Belgian First Division B team Royale Union Saint-Gilloise.
Poker and betting[edit]
Bloom has been a sports bettor and property investor, nicknamed The Lizard.
Bloom appeared in the Late Night Poker television series and also has a final table appearance on the World Poker Tour. He also made back-to-back final table appearances in the first two Poker Million events. His first major win came in January 2004 when he won the Australasian Poker Championship in Melbourne, collecting a first prize of around A$420,000 ($320,000, £180,000).[1]
Bloom won the £5,000 No LimitHold'emVC Poker Cup Final in London on 5 August 2005 and won the £200,000 ($351,401) first prize.
He also had a fourth-place finish in the 2005 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions. He was a member of the winning British team in the Poker Nations Cup.
As of 2008, his total live tournament winnings exceed $1,500,000. Bloom won A$600,000 for his second-place finish in the High Rollers Challenge, event 8 of the Australian Poker Millions tournament held in Melbourne in Jan 2009.
Anthony Bloom Betting
Bloom fell short of the million pound grand prize in the Poker Million IX event held in London on 10 December 2010. He finished second behind Gus Hansen.[2]
Entrepreneur[edit]
Bloom is believed to have accumulated wealth through developing online gambling and gaming websites, and through property and start-up investments.[3][4]
Football chairman[edit]
Since 2009, Bloom has been the chairman of Brighton & Hove Albion, who are currently a Premier League club, having gained promotion in the 2016–17 season after 34 years out of the top flight of English football.
He succeeded Dick Knight after securing a 75% shareholding in the club and investing £93 million in the development of the club's new ground, Falmer Stadium.[5][6] Since the stadium has been built, it has received numerous extensions in spectator capacity and has received funding to ensure that it is 'Premier League ready' by installing floodlights, amongst other minor features.
Upon taking over the club, Bloom declared his love of the game, 'I've been a football fan and a gambler since the age of about seven or eight. My interest in both developed at the same time.'[7] Bloom is a longtime fan of Brighton[8] and his family has had a long association with the club: his uncle Ray is a director and his grandfather, Harry, was vice-chairman during the 1970s.[9]
On becoming chairman, Bloom appointed former Uruguay international Gus Poyet as manager, and together they led the team to promotion from Football League One as champions in 2011, the season before Brighton moved into their new home - the Falmer Stadium. Poyet left the club in 2013 after losing in a play-off semi-final to Crystal Palace. In June 2013, Bloom appointed Óscar García as the new head coach of the club; Garcia resigned after losing a second successive play-off semi-final to Derby County and left the club in May 2014. The next manager was former Liverpool player Sami Hyypiä, who only lasted a few months in the managerial role after a poor start to the 2014–15 season left Brighton in the relegation zone. Chris Hughton became manager towards the end of 2014, and the club have been successful since.
Hughton steered Albion to safety in their 2014–15 campaign, and then guided the club to a 3rd-place position in the Championship in the following season, missing out on promotion to Middlesbrough on goal difference. The club would be defeated in the play-off semi final, for the third time in four years, this time to Sheffield Wednesday.
Brighton went one step further in the 2016–17 season under Hughton's management and Bloom's ownership, finishing 2nd in the Championship and gaining promotion to the Premier League for the first time in the club's history. Bloom backed Hughton in the following transfer window, breaking several record transfer fees to improve the squad, readying Brighton's first Premier League season. On 13 May 2019, immediately after the end of the season, with the club ending at the 17th position and thus securing its top-tier status for the coming season, Bloom released a statement to the effect that 'it was time for a change' and sacked Hughton, replacing him with Championship's Swansea coach Graham Potter.[10]
In 2018, Bloom completed the takeover of Belgian second division club Union SG.[11]
Personal life, and other ventures[edit]
Bloom is Jewish, and has contributed significantly to the development of a synagogue project in Hove. He stepped in with the Brighton and Hove Hebrew Congregation suffering financial problems, and the funding for the development will come from his Bloom Foundation, of which he is the chairman.[12]
References[edit]
- ^Tony Bloom's Player Profile and HistoryArchived 2 March 2010 at the Wayback MachinePokerpages. Retrieved 1 May 2010
- ^Hendon Mob DatabaseThe Hendon Mob. Retrieved 26 May 2011
- ^https://www.businessinsider.com/tony-bloom-biography-2017-4
- ^https://www.theargus.co.uk/sport/4387975.how-bloom-hit-the-jackpot/
- ^Stadium Funding SecuredArchived 22 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine, Seagulls World, 18 May 2009. Retrieved 18 May 2009
- ^Prediction for 09-10 SeasonSquarefootball, 21 February 2009. Retrieved 21 February 2009
- ^TONY IS BLOOM-ING GOODNOTW, 16 May 2009. Retrieved 16 May 2009
- ^Szczepanik, Nick (22 May 2009). ''I'm no Abramovich' says new Brighton chairman'. Times Online. Retrieved 4 June 2011.
- ^Szczepanik, Nick (19 May 2009). 'Brighton secure £93m investment'. Times Online. Retrieved 4 June 2011.
- ^'Brighton: Chris Hughton surprised and disappointed by sacking'. BBC. 22 May 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
- ^https://www.theargus.co.uk/sport/16239606.done-deal-albion-chairman-tony-bloom-completes-takeover-of-belgian-club-saint-gilloise/
- ^'Albion owner finances new synagogue project'. The Argus. 28 October 2017.
External links[edit]
Tony “The Lizard” Bloom is a British professional sports bettor, poker player, and entrepreneur notably known for his ownership of the Brighton & Hove Albion soccer club in England. However, before his involvement in English soccer, The Lizard was even more famous in the gambling world. Nicknamed the Lizard because of his cold-blooded gambling approach, Bloom is estimated to be worth a few billion, though nobody knows for certain. He is believed to have accumulated his wealth through online gambling sites and property investments.
He now has a personal team of experts that operate his gambling efforts, which act more like a hedge fund and less of a gambling organization. Bloom has always known exactly what he was doing and can keep a straight face while doing so. It doesn’t matter if he’s placing a “small” wager down or a multi-million dollar one, his belief that his statistics and strategy are the only confidence he needs. Losing money isn’t really an issue for The Lizard though, as he has continually increased his net worth through his gambling background, which is why he is one of the most famous sports bettorsaround.
Growing Up With Tony Bloom
Tony Bloom was in the gambling world ever since his adolescent days. At the young age of 10-year-old, Bloom made his first wager on a slot machine with money he managed to collect himself over time. The young entrepreneur became enthralled with the idea of taking risks for potentially high rewards. This was the beginning of his career as a professional gambler. As he got older, he moved on from slots to betting on sports and he hasn’t looked back since. He used a fake ID while he was a teenager (not recommended) and was able to sneak into several sportsbooks to wager on his favorite teams. He started winning big at a very young age. Bloom was eventually caught and forced to postpone his gambling career until he was of the legal betting age. When he was finally old enough, Bloom returned to the sports betting world, mainly betting on soccer matches. Blooms credit his success in soccer betting as being a die-hard fan and not having any real strategy.
The Lizard Develops His Strategy
After graduating college and working for Ernst & Young for a short period, Bloom transitioned from recreationally betting on sports to deciding to make it his main focus. His strategy became to bet aggressively claiming that to win big, you have to be okay with the risk of losing. This mindset gave him the cold-blooded appeal that others seemed to admire, where walking away from large sums of money was easy. It also helped him to have a sizable bankroll to start with.
Another of Bloom’s other points of emphasis is to not overestimate the impact of an injury. Bettors and bookmakers often overreact to injuries, especially to big-name players. Bloom has noted this as a market inefficiency and would frequently bet on the team with the injured player. Another point of strategic emphasis for Bloom is his willingness to wait until the last possible minute to place a wager, as in his estimation the additional info available for patient bettors outweighs any benefits of betting early.
Handicapping Soccer Matches
Working for Victor Chandler, Bloom took a deep dive into Asian betting styles. These are slightly different from the common wagering lines seen in Europe and the US, where a goal differential compared to the most recent form is required to hit in order for a wager to be successful. His mathematical background allowed him to analyze data and handicap games for the company. With the industry growing and rather unknown at the time, Bloom spent some months living in Thailand as well as on the south of Spain in Gibraltar.
Everything changed during the 1998 World Cup when Bloom realized the bet on the century. In a wagering tournament, The Lizard convinced the company to wager everything it had earned on the final matchup. There is no data as to how much was won by the company, but immediately after BetVictor was formed – one of the most renown UK betting brands. Bloom went his own route and developed Premier Bet, which also took a focus on the Asian handicap system.
Starlizard
Tony Bloom Betting Sports
Bloom founded Starlizard which can be described as a hedge fund for sports betting. While very limited data is released to the public and every member is required to sign a nondisclosure, it is believed to be the largest gambling syndicate in all of the U.K. The company uses statistical models to find value in certain wagers and sells picks to clients in order to gain more clients from their success. Unlike previous operations Bloom was associated with, Starlizard does not accept action but rather offers advice.
Their insight comes not only from league and player data but information from any source they can get their hands on. Whether a beat writer, a friend of a player, or expert, the company takes on the impact of morale and training to analyze every little data as much as possible. Their models would constantly be updated to reflect how much weight each determinant would carry and have very rarely offered losing bets to their clients.
Because Bloom now owns Brighton & Hove Albion, wagers associated with the club are off-limits. Bloom’s connection with Brighton stemmed back through his family’s lineage, as the uncle was a director and his grandfather was a vice-chairman of the team. Soccer is the clear favorite sport for Bloom, who also recently purchased Union SG in 2018. With two professional sports teams under his belt and the dedication to pay whatever it takes to succeed, Bloom has turned his gambling habits into becoming one of the wealthiest men in the world. 2021 projects to be another year of profits for Bloom and Starlizard.
Bloom’s Time As A Poker Player
Tony Bloom Sports Betting
Bloom started as a poker player, where he has toured in a variety of series and tournaments, being labeled as one of the best poker players despite his limited professional status. Bloom appeared in the Late Night Poker British television series and has also scored a final table appearance on the WPT (World Poker Tour). He made two consecutive final table appearances in the Poker Million events and scored his first major win the 2004 Australasian Poker Championship. He has gone on to score an impressive poker purse while still maintaining his semi-professional status.